In 1997 Hollis Sigler commissioned 53 other artists to collaborate with her in designing a deck of cards to raise money and awareness for Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, a Chicago-based non-profit whose mission was to assure through information, empowerment and peer support, that no one faces breast cancer alone. The result was the deck of cards listed here, published with the assistance of Printworks Gallery in Chicago. I am not certain whether Y-ME or Printworks should be considered the publisher. The deck is called, “A Game of Chance,” which according to the box is a “metaphor for the unknown risk all women face from breast cancer.” Ultimately, Y-ME would close its doors in 2012.

The Wikipedia article on Hollis Sigler includes the following:

“Hollis Sigler (1948–2001) was a Chicago-based artist whose paintings addressed her life with breast cancer. She died of the disease in 2001, at the age of 53. She received degrees from both Moore College of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her mature artistic style was faux-naïve, featuring paintings whose subjects, furniture and clothing set in doll-house type interiors and suburban landscapes, were stand-ins for the implicitly female figure. She was an openly lesbian artist and a prominent member of the faculty of Columbia College in Chicago. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985, Sigler’s themes became more personal, confronting ideas about body image, heredity, illness, mortality and hope.”

A powerful and moving book of Sigler’s paintings, titled “Breast Cancer Journal,” has been published by Hudson Hills Press.

The deck has 52 suited cards, plus 2 Jokers, plus 4 extra cards introducing the deck, its artists and the Y-ME organization. The cards are wide, measuring 89mm x 63mm, and they come in the original box.

The cards are “as new.” The box is in excellent condition, “as new” except for very minor shelf wear at the corners of the flaps.